PIECES AND PIECES #3
by Amanda Q
electrichaos.etsy.com
I was so excited to get zines from someone who has a background in graphic design!
Aesthetically, this zine is filled with grungey elements, photography and collage - things I adore! I really liked the stereotypes of roommates as well, and I think anyone who has had more than one roommate in their lives would have a good hearty laugh about it. While I found a lot of the writing to be clever, I found some of it to be super boring. But, most of the parts I found boring were about bands she likes that I’ve never heard of, so maybe that’s just me because I have no interest in music zines or reviews of bands I’ve never heard of. Also, she didn’t use any bleeds, which would’ve given the zine a more professional look, and it sort of drove me crazy. Anyone with any graphic design knowledge should know better! The more the zine went on, the more fragmented her sentences got and the more and more she used “like”. Some people would probably link that to an uncensored, more personal feel, which is cool — but I found it rather irritating after a few pages. Despite these criticisms, I did enjoy the zine. It was a good mix of hand-made and computer elements, and a lot of the writing was really cute and real.
MANIFEST MY DESTINY: A COLLECTION OF COLLAGE
by Amanda Q
electrichaos.etsy.com
Yet again, Amanda totally should’ve used bleeds! It would’ve given the zine a much better effect. Nonetheless, I totally adored it. Printed on high quality (maybe semi-gloss?) paper, this zine is full colour and are pages of an altered book project! I really, really like this zine. She sent it to me unexpected, and it was a really nice surprise! I’d recommend it to anyone who likes art zines, or collage in general.
RUM LAD #4
by Steve Larder
This is a comic type zine about Steve’s adventures to Germany for the Mulheim Zine Festival. I must say, I was super impressed with the artwork, and how everything was hand written (although, some of the words I was unable to make out). I sat down and read this in one sitting, which says a lot since I have an infamously short attention span. In between and around stories of the zine fest and the trip to Germany are general thoughts about life and the way he is living it - things I think all of us can relate to, especially creative people. I really enjoyed this zine and would like to find earlier copies, and will definitely be looking out for new ones in the future.
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i've always been interested in doing bleeds for my pages, but don't have the patience to sit and cut off the borders of my photocopied pages when i've already got 50 zines to cut in half, collate, fold & staple. is there any easy way to make a xerox machine do the bleeds on it's own (since i pretty much design up to the edges of my sheets anyway)?
ReplyDeleteLast year I got a guillotine cutter - for cutting zines and cutting off edges. It cuts about 20 pages at a time, which is handy. I used to do them by hand, arg.
ReplyDeleteWhen you do them on the computer, you can set bleeds and set it up so that it prints on the entire page. Depending on what you're doing, sometimes you still have to trim them even on the computer (but we use crop marks to make this less time consuming). When you use a photocopier with zines fully made by hand, I'm pretty sure it is inevitable.
When you do things commercially, things are sent to a printing company where there are multiples of the project on the page, and they go through these big machines with giant blades that cut everything (REALLY SCARY!). Sometimes things shift, and if you don't have bleeds, you'll end up with crappy white lines on the edges.
It's a pain in the ass, but I think the final product is really worth it. (I am also a perfectionist hah). I wouldn't expect zinesters to know all this, it was just a criticism toward someone with graphic design knowledge.
oh yes, i figured that's what you meant. i was just wondering if it could be done with just a photocopier. i have a smaller paper-cutter but it can only handle about five sheets at a time. i suppose if i wanted to spend more time at kinkos i could use their big ol industrial cutter to snip off all those white edges. but i don't think i'd like to spend that much time at kinkos haha
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